


An Expected Guest

by dandyli0n



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: (a general warning for a certain part of this talking about shit kids), (mentioned but just in case anyone would find it triggering), Angst, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Murder, Non-Linear Narrative, Parent Death, Teenagers, Underage Drinking, the most emo thing I've ever written tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29849064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandyli0n/pseuds/dandyli0n
Summary: The story of a relationship, from its beginning, to its end.OR: It's their anniversary, and Chan and Minho receive an expected guest.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Lee Minho | Lee Know/Seo Changbin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	An Expected Guest

**Author's Note:**

> So. This is mostly a storytelling experiment. It's more about the journey than the substance. But I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.
> 
> THIS IS YOUR SECOND REMINDER TO READ THE TAGS IF YOU HAVEN'T A LOT OF UNPLEASANT TOPICS ARE TOUCHED UPON IN THIS PLEASE KEEP YOURSELF SAFE BY READING THE TAGS THIS WAS A PSA THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.
> 
> The beginning of this was a Fall Out Boy-driven ride honestly. You can listen to Hum Hallelujah while reading if you like mood music I guess. It didn't end in the station it began at but.
> 
> Also a little disclaimer: this has. 0 to do with the actual people these characters are named after. They only help me create by being my muses, so the characters are named in their honor. I am QUITE sure none of them would ever make the kind of choices these characters make. They're not THAT stupid.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

It was their anniversary.

Minho sat on a blanket laid out in the sand and watched his husband watch the sunset. His back was to Minho, the water lapping at his feet. He looked like a vision like this, wide back dark in sharp contrast to the burnt orange sky, the last rays of sunshine wrapping around him, making him shine at the edges, like he couldn't even be real.

Minho couldn't tear his eyes away. It was moments like these that made him remember why he had said yes back then. That made him remember what about him made Minho think that he was the one he should give his forever to.

As if he could feel Minho's eyes digging into his back, Chan turned around and smiled at him, his eyes crinkling beautifully.

Minho's breath hitched. The love of his life; he was the love of his life.

He smiled back.

**-6-**

They were 17. Minho's dad was just diagnosed with leukemia, and the other boy just buried his sister. It was a foul-weather friendship, really. It barely existed when they were in school, or out with their "real" friends. It existed in the empty spaces in between, in little stolen moments.

Without their friends and families and all their expectations around, they could just be themselves. There were no bad boys or model students or filial sons. Just two miserable seventeen-year-olds and the stolen bottle of Jim Beam between them.

Minho was aware even back then that there was something special between them. Somehow, something about their shared misery connected them in ways he had never experienced before, or really since. What they had was just different. They picked at each other's sore spots constantly, but they never felt bitter towards each other because of it. They didn't know each other that well, yet getting drunk together and letting their guards down was the easiest thing in the world when they were alone together. Neither of them was out, yet there were no tearful confessions, there was no awkward moment that had led up to their first kiss. There was no fear in sharing even that part of themselves with each other. When Minho lost his virginity to him, it felt right. He had been the first person to see Minho break down and cry after his father's diagnosis, so he got to be the first person to experience him falling apart from pleasure, too.

It was a give and take, in a way. They held each other when the grief got overwhelming, then fucked and drank their feelings away. Each of them got their own.

In a way, it was perfect.

**-5-**

It was on a cold day in April that they made their promise.

Minho was 18 and graduation was coming, the inevitable question of what would come afterwards haunting him every day and every night.

Their relationship grew like a flower through a crack in the pavement over the last year. It grew out from the hidden, dark spaces, wrapped itself all around Minho like a security blanket.

His dad had passed away, and his mother, despite doing her best to love her son as well as she could, hadn't looked at him the same way ever since he stepped into her house hand in hand with another boy the day after the funeral. Even his friends pulled back from him; they never started outright hating him, no, but they made it clear that whoever Minho was now, that boy wasn't welcome to their hangouts anymore.

No more beers in his best friend's attic with all of the boys, no more baseball after school and loud conversation in the cafeteria that would threaten to get Minho kicked out. This Minho, the Minho who lived with a permanent headache behind his eyes and only got himself out of the bed with the promise of feeling a rough, familiar hand in his again, he wasn't part of that world anymore.

So they made a new world, their own, and they grew into each other, around each other like intertwined vines. Minho dyed his hair a deeper shade of black to go with his bleached hair. Got up early so they could drive to the school together an hour before class started and sit in the bed of his truck, Minho tucked into his arms more often than not, sharing cigarettes and telling each other about their nightmares, about their sleepless nights. It was just one more way for them to mold together, to share so much of their lives with each other that it had started to feel like one. Like  _ their _ life.

That day, everything felt grey. One had spent a dreamless night, and the other hadn't slept at all. They clung to each other that morning, every single pull from their morning cigarette shared between their mouths, not even kissing, just sharing smoke, sharing each other's air, like they were trying to force reality from in between them. The world didn't suck if they were each other's entire world; and only then.

School felt like hours of drawn out torture, stolen kisses and touches in the bathrooms between classes doing little to soothe the dull ache in Minho's chest that had been there since he woke up. He kept thinking about it. About graduation. About the future. About the threat of separation.

He had to leave his mother; he knew that. He couldn't take her forced smiles and overly polite questions about "how the boy he was seeing was doing". His best chance was escaping to college; the art school scholarship he got was his golden ticket, but it came at a steep price.

Minho would have to go alone, and at that point, that seemed impossible. After all this time, all the months spent intertwined, Minho couldn't just leave his boyfriend behind. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

After school, Minho got dropped off at home so he could pretend that nothing was wrong between him and his mother for a few hours before he did his duties and could walk right back out to see his boyfriend again. Then they wasted their time together eating gas station candy, sharing cigarettes and listening to The Used. When they were like this, Minho sideways in the passenger seat with his feet all the way in his boyfriend's lap, entrusting his life fully to the driving skills of the love of his life who tapped ash out the car window while Minho stuck another gummy bear in his mouth while listening to him shout along to the lyrics, meeting Minho’s adoring eyes so he could smirk at him as he nodded along to the rhythm of the solo, it was perfect. The world didn’t exist outside of the cabin of the pick up truck, and they liked it that way.

They ended up at an abandoned parking lot behind the closed-down hardware store, ignoring the chill in favor of each other's body heat as they tossed their clothes the minute it was clear they were alone. Just like that morning, it was like they couldn't stand even an inch of space between them, hands grabbing on so tightly they left bruises on each other, but they weren't rushing to the finish, just desperate to be as close as they could.

When the night fell on them, they curled up together under two of the blankets they usually lay on, Minho for once not the one being held, but the one holding, playing with his boyfriend's hand. Minho took his fingers one by one, lingering on his ring finger, circling it gently.

"What are you thinking about?" Minho could hear the smile in his boyfriend's voice even though he couldn't see it.

"Running away with you."

It was blunt, yet true, and nothing he hadn't said to him yet. Minho still hid his face in the side of his lover's neck after saying it.

The chuckle he got in response was fond, but exhausted. He didn't blame him. "Can't do that, baby."

With a hum, Minho nibbled on the skin under his mouth before he continued. "I'm leaving this fucking place, anyway. Just come with me. I'll take care of you."

That earned him a snort, and fingers carding through his hair despite the awkward angle. "That's hot; but you know I can't." He poked Minho's nose, making him pout. "We'd  _ both _ be fucked."

"I can't leave without you."

"You fucking  _ love _ dancing, Minho. You're not staying here."

Minho pulled him closer, kissed his shoulder a few times. "I love  _ you _ more."

"I'll be there. Give me a year."

"Last week you said two."

Minho watched him bite his lip as he stared straight ahead, not meeting Minho's eyes. "One and a half."

"Cha-"

" _ I promise _ ."

Minho snapped his mouth shut and huffed out through his nose. To his surprise, this time his huffing and puffing actually got him somewhere, the body warming his front shifting to settle into his lap the other way around, facing him. Two cold hands pushed his overgrown hair out of his face.

" _ I promise _ ," he repeated, pressing a soft, chaste kiss to Minho's lips, then leaning their foreheads together. "Give me a year and a half. And you'll have me for the rest of my life."

"Well that's fucking romantic."

There it was. The smile he fell in love with. "Alright, Mr. I'd-Give-Up-My-Life's-Passion-For-You-But-Forever's-Too-Long-For-Me."

"I didn't say  _ that _ ." It made Minho smile, too.

"No?"

"No." Minho leaned up to kiss him. He couldn't get himself to say it, the exact words.  _ I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I can't imagine living without you anymore _ .

So they made out for a bit instead, Minho’s arms wrapping around his neck to keep him close, rubbing their noses together between kisses.

“So.” Minho felt the words pressed into the corner of his mouth by plush lips. 

“So?”

“Is that a yes?”

Minho blinked at his boyfriend as he pulled back from him. “A yes to what?”

He earned himself an eye roll. “ _ Waiting for me _ , Minho.” It almost sounded like a whine. “I promise to come find you in a year and a half.” The rough palms he’d grown to love cradled his jaw. “Will you promise to wait for me?”

Minho stared into the eyes of the love of his life, watched the street lights flicker to life behind him, bathing him in their sickly yellow light from behind, throwing the whole scene into sharp contrast. Dark eyes full of life, shadowy shoulders and a sea of gray and yellow behind them. This was the color palette he lived in now; but the eyes he was staring into made that okay; the palms holding his face made that okay.

Slowly, he nodded. Eighteen months, in return for the rest of their lives. It seemed like a good deal.

"I promise."

The smile he got in response was one that he would wait whole lifetimes to see again.

**-4-**

It was their anniversary.

Minho was sitting opposite Chan at the dinner table, staring at his husband’s eyes. There was so much love in the way he looked up at Minho. So much warmth.

Chan caught Minho staring, and reached out his hand. A familiar gesture. Minho’s hand felt heavy, but he forced it to lift onto the table and lay it in Chan’s. He squeezed, and Minho found his eyes slipping closed at how soft his palm felt.

When Minho had met him, Chan was everything he needed. And for the longest time, for  _ years _ , he was everything he wanted, too. He was his comfort. Minho lived and breathed Chan.

“Love.” Even his voice was so fucking soft. Because of course it was; Chan was worried. Chan always worried about people. “Is something going on?”

“No.” He could barely force the word out.

The way Chan’s thumb caressed the back of Minho’s hand was  _ achingly _ gentle. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Love-” This time Minho couldn’t hold back the way he winced at the pet name. Chan halted, but he took a deep breath and carried on; because Chan was too good to hold it against him. He was always too good; too kind; too amiable. “Minho. You know you can talk to me about anything.”

That was what marriage was supposed to be like, wasn’t it. It was about sharing things; sharing their  _ lives _ with each other. Intertwining them, until they couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended.

Minho  _ used _ to feel like that.

“I know.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’m just not hungry.”

Minho stood up to go get the door.

**-3-**

Minho was 18, and he had just graduated. After the ceremony, he barely acknowledged his mother before running into a pair of strong, leather-clad arms. That was it for them. One more summer, one more bittersweet hurrah and then a year and a half of shitty long-distance suffering.  _ If _ the promise was even kept at all.

He refused to believe that his boyfriend would break his trust like that. He couldn't. He wouldn’t. They were too important to each other; they couldn’t live without each other.

They would find their way to each other again.

So he did his best to blink away the tears that welled up in his eyes as they kissed, as they escaped all the usual celebrations in favor of the pick up truck, their little safe haven.

They drove around town for a few hours, mostly quiet, just enjoying each other’s company.

As the sunset approached, they took the winding road up the hill behind town to watch it together, sitting in the bed of the truck, side by side this time, shoulder to shoulder as they shared Minho’s favorite whiskey. It was probably the most clichéd thing they’ve ever done, but Minho had the feeling that watching a sunset together at a moment like that had a pretty neat symbolism to it.

It was the end of something, kind of beautiful and kind of depressing. Bittersweet, like most things between them were.

Once they were a little buzzed, Minho reached out his hand for his boyfriend to give him the bottle again, but instead something cool and smooth was pressed into the palm of his hand.

It was a ring, and when he looked at his boyfriend in shock, it was followed by a question as well. It had a caveat attached to it, of course, the stupid eighteen months between them and happiness, but it felt overshadowed by what the ring meant. Sure, it was just a stupid piece of metal, but somehow, when he looked into his boyfriend’s eyes, it felt like handcuffs that he was all to eager to use to cuff himself to this boy forever and throw away the key.

Minho’s giggly “yes” marked the beginning of the most blissful summer he had ever had.

**-2-**

Minho was pushing thirty, eleven years after he accepted a proposal in the middle of nowhere in the bed of a pick up truck.

The ring on his finger burned as he opened the front door of their house.

Even though he had known who’d be there, seeing the person waiting on Minho’s porch still felt like being hit with a lightning bolt. For too long, he just stood there and stared. Unable to breathe, unable to think. His stomach turning over and over and over.

He thought of Chan’s hand in his, of his silhouette against the setting sun. Of whispered words of comfort when he held Minho after a hard day on their couch. Of the dinner he had refused to eat earlier, despite Chan having had spent so much time lovingly preparing it for them.

“Hi,” came the hesitant voice of his expected guest. Teeth tugged at a bottom lip Minho couldn’t look at without remembering all too vividly what it tasted like.

Minho swallowed. He couldn’t meet his eyes, so he studied everything else; his new tattoos, his half shaved off hair, his shitty black hoodie. “Hey, Changbin.”

When Changbin tucked his hands into the pockets of the hoodie, it made something painful lodge in Minho’s chest. He wondered if it would have hurt more if Changbin had reached out for him instead.

“You’ve made up your mind, right?” Even avoiding his eyes, Minho could tell that Changbin wasn’t looking at him either.

Slowly, Minho got his heavy head to nod. “Yes.” He couldn’t live like this. He… in a way he’d known that ever since he  _ met _ Chan. That it couldn’t last. As much as Minho had fought to keep himself intertwined with Chan, as much as he tried to lose himself in him and in their relationship, he had always known that there was a time limit to them. A counter ticking over the delicately, lovingly wired bomb that was their relationship.

Now their time was up, and Minho was just hoping it wouldn’t be his face the bomb would blow up in.

**-1-**

Minho was twenty and crying his eyes out on the kitchen floor. His entire life had just crumbled to pieces within the span of one fifteen minute call. He was in jail. The love of his fucking life was rotting in a fucking county jail after they scraped together enough evidence to charge him with armed robbery, but they were still looking if they could decorate his record with anything else; he was a well-known face when it came to causing trouble in their area, after all.

He was not going to make it. Fuck eighteen months, he would be lucky if he got out of jail before he turned fifty.

Every single promise they made, every plan for the future was now a lie. They were so naïve to think that things could actually work out for them. That the universe would stop fucking them over just because they had asked nicely or because they fell in love.

If the universe was so dedicated to showing Minho the middle finger, he would do it one better. He couldn’t,  _ wouldn’t _ make it without him. His little art college of dreams had already been proving to be a  _ nightmare _ with his only coping mechanism miles away from him. Without him, he had nothing to live for. So,  _ fuck _ life.

Life wasn’t worth living without Changbin.

When he had woken up to the nauseating smell of hospital later that night after his roommate found him on their kitchen floor, it was to a pair of tired, but curious dark eyes watching him from the bed next to him, followed by a soft, dimpled smile.

Chan’s arms were bandaged at the wrists, too.

**-0-**

Chan Christopher Bang was never going to make it past thirty.

Changbin’s hand snuck into Minho’s as he slowly led him towards the kitchen.

“Love?” There was a clank of dishes coming from the room; Chan had probably decided to start cleaning up while Minho was gone. “Who was it?”

Minho crossed the threshold. Watched his husband’s eyes flicker from him to their guest, to their joined hands hanging between them.

“... oh.” Chan’s shoulders dropped. He sighed, and turned back to the sink, shutting the water off.

Changbin looked at Minho in confusion, but he was too busy staring at Chan’s back.

Reaching to the side for a hand towel, Chan let out a huff that was a little too sharp to be amused, but too soft to be a scoff. “So, how long has this been going on?” He turned around to face them head on as he dried his hands, and a part of Minho admired him for it.

“It’s him, Chan.” He couldn’t recognize his own voice; it was like it was coming from miles away.

Chan’s eyes widened slightly. “Him? The one who ended up in jail?”

Changbin scoffed, but Minho nodded. “He was released two months ago.”

“You could have told me.”

Minho couldn’t get himself to meet his eyes this time as he nodded again.

“I was wondering why you were getting so distant,” Chan sounded almost  _ guilty _ , like he was blaming  _ himself _ for not having figured it out. Minho’s heart hurt for him.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he admitted.

“ _ Why not? _ ”  _ This time _ , it was a snap. Chan’s eyes were getting red and glossy.

Minho squeezed Changbin’s hand and the other moved even closer than he already was. He kept swallowing against the lump in his throat, but couldn’t bring himself to answer.

Chan laughed, choked up and bitter. “You knew I’d lose it.” He scrunched up his nose, rubbed at his face. “You knew I couldn’t handle the idea of facing this shit without you.” With his hands clasped over his mouth, he let out another hysterical giggle. “Is this your fucking solution, love? To bring him to our fucking kitchen to twist the knife a little bit while you’re at it?”

Next to Minho, Changbin took a steady step forward. “ _ Don’t fucking use that tone with him you _ -”

“Shh.” Minho tugged at Changbin’s hand, held his gaze as he pulled him back, trying to beg him to stay quiet with his expression alone. He had loved Chan once, and he wanted to do this right. “Please.”

Changbin scoffed and looked away, but kept holding onto Minho’s hand.

Chan’s eyes were glossy but focused when he met them again; he was studying them so intently. It made Minho shiver in discomfort.

“Chan,” he hesitated right afterwards, but mustered up the courage to continue. “Yes, I knew. I knew you weren’t going to be able to handle this.” His breath quickened. Changbin tightened his grip on his hand, now looking at him again. “But it’s going to be okay; I promise.”

Something in Chan’s expression, something terrified yet oddly resigned, told him that he knew what was coming even before Changbin pulled the gun out with his free hand. Maybe he was hoping that’s where this was going. Maybe he and Minho really did know each other that well.

Changbin offered Minho the gun with a question on his face, and Minho accepted it.

“Is it because of the money?” Chan’s voice was too calm for this situation.

Minho and Changbin exchanged a look. “We do need the money,” Minho admitted. “All of it; not just a half. We need to pay off a debt and get out of the country as quickly as possible.”

Chan slowly nodded, clearly processing it. “So you’re not doing this for me.”

He shrugged. “I do it knowing that it’s probably what’s best for you. I don’t want you to have to live the life I lived, Chan,” he let go of Changbin’s hand and got ready to fire. “A life without the one you love is barely worth living.”

With his eyes fixed on Minho’s, Chan asked one last question.

“Did you ever love me at all?”

Minho smiled softly, fondly, and pulled the trigger.

  
  
  



End file.
